ARTnews in Brief: Museum of Arts and Design Names Research Curator—and More from January 24, 2020

January 21, 2020 3:46pm

The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) today announced the appointment of Christian Larsen, Windgate Research Curator.Courtesy of MAD

Friday, January 24

The Museum of Arts and Design Names Research CuratorChristian Larsen has been appointed Windgate Research Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) in New York. In this new position, Larsen will oversee an educational and curatorial partnership between the museum and Bard Graduate Center. Prior to joining MAD, he held curatorial positions at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art.

Thursday, January 23

Hollis Taggart Adds Two Artists to Roster
Hollis Taggart gallery in New York now represents Dana James and John Knuth. Both artists are known for their abstract works, with James drawing inspiration for her paintings from images associated with Americana and Knuth creating installations and paintings oftentimes addressing environmental issues.

A Blade of Grass Appoints New Staff and Board Members
The New York–based nonprofit A Blade of Grass has named Kathryn McKinney, who most recently worked as director of public relations at Lehmann Maupin gallery, as its first head of content and communications. In her new role, McKinney will manage the organization’s web and print media. Additionally, philanthropist Michael Quattrone, the cofounder of Hudson River Valley nonprofit retreat Hearthfire, has been added to A Blade of Grass’s board.

Santa Barbara Museum of Art Names New Curator of Contemporary Art
The Santa Barbara Museum of Art in California has appointed James Glisson as its new curator of contemporary art. Glisson joins the museum on February 10 following his tenure as chief curator of American art at the Huntington in San Marino, California. Some of his curatorial credits at the Huntington include “A World of Strangers: Crowds in American Art,” “Frederick Hammersley: To Paint without Thinking,” and “Nineteen Nineteen,” the Huntington’s centennial exhibition, among other presentations.

Wednesday, January 22

Foundation for Contemporary Arts Announces 2020 Artist Grant Recipients
The New York–based organization the Foundation for Contemporary Arts has given 19 unrestricted grants of $40,000 each to individual artists. Grants are awarded in the categories of dance, music and sound, performance art and theater, visual arts, and poetry. The visual artists who received this year’s grants are Kerstin Brätsch, Brad Kahlhamer, and Frederick Weston. The John Cage Award, which also comes with an unrestricted $40,000 purse, was awarded to the artist Meredith Monk. The full list of awardees can be found here.

Pace Expands Photography Program, Brings on Five Artists
Amid a larger push to bring all of Pace Gallery’s related enterprises under one umbrella operation, Pace/MacGill, a gallery devoted to photography, will be fully integrated into Pace’s programming. Lauren Panzo, the former vice president of Pace/MacGill, will now lead Pace’s photography department, and through the arrangement, Pace has added five photographers to its roster—Robert Frank, Peter Hujar, David Goldblatt, Harry Callahan, and Richard Misrach. (Hujar and Misrach will continue being represented by Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco, and Misrach will also be represented by Marc Selwyn Fine Art, located in Beverly Hills, California. Goldblatt will also continue being represented by Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg.)

Indianapolis Contemporary Names Executive DirectorBraydee Euliss is the new director of Indianapolis Contemporary, which changed its name from the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art last May. Euliss had joined the institution in April 2019 as its development director. Prior to that she was executive director for five years of the Muncie Arts & Culture Council, a municipal organization promoting the arts in Muncie, Indiana, about 50 miles northeast of Indianapolis.

Tuesday, January 21

TEFAF President and Chief Executive ResignsPatrick van Maris, who has served as president and chief executive of the European Fine Art Fair since 2015, will leave his post in May following the exhibition’s New York edition. During his tenure, van Maris established the Dutch fair’s annual New York presentations. A successor for van Maris has not yet been named.

Miles McEnery Gallery Now Represents Pia FriesPia Fries, a Swiss-born artist known for her gestural abstractions involving layered swatches of painted and silkscreened colors, has joined the roster of New York’s Miles McEnery Gallery. A former student of Gerhard Richter, Fries was the subject of a survey at Paris’s Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville in 2018, and is currently based in Düsseldorf and Munich, both in Germany.

University Museum of Contemporary Art Names DirectorAmanda de la Garza has been appointed director general of visual arts at the University Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC) in Mexico City. De la Garza previously served as a curator of contemporary art at the institution since 2012. In this new position, she will oversee curatorial affairs at MUAC and the art groups associated with the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Portland Art Museum Receives Historic Gift
The Portland Art Museum in Oregonhas received a gift of $10 million from prominent collector and arts philanthropist Arlene Schnitzer, marking the largest individual donation in the 127-year history of the museum, and the largest gift ever to a Portland-based arts organization. Schnitzer and her late husband, Harold, were longtime supporters of the museum, having provided financial support of exhibitions and acquisitions for nearly 50 years. The Schnitzels have donated their Chinese Han Dynasty collection to the institution in addition to other notable endowments of Northwest and Asian art, whose curatorial positions are named in the family’s honor.